Guerilla Marketing on the Internet: The Definitive Guide from the Father of Guerilla Marketing

For any small business, the Guerrilla series on building a business at a lower cost is an excellent resurce. We’ve used “Guerrilla Marketing” in our small business for more than 5 years, and found it very useful in helping our business grow while keeping our costs down.

Briefly, the differences between Guerrilla Marketing and traditional marketing are a greater dependence on personal networking, word-of-mouth, and personal efforts, and the realization that marketing includes everything a business person does, including the design of the Web site and the appearance of the store. Not to mention having a good product and a passion for your business.

But perhaps the biggest difference is that the Guerrilla Marketer understands that building a business and marketing it takes time. It’s a process that goes on all the time, for as long as it takes to be successful. It doesn’t take a lot of money, but it does take time.

I think that as a writer that’s the most important lesson I’ve learned from reading Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet. The Internet is a flash thing. In designing Web sites, there’s the rule of three’s: 3 seconds to get someone’s attention, and 3 clicks for them to find what they’re looking for on a site. Ironically, using such a fast system and making it work for an entrepreneur is not a short process.

Bulding a Web site? Make sure it represents your company, because it’s your store window to the world’s Main Street.

Using a Blog? If not, you might consider doing so because it’s a very useful tool in personal networking on the Web. But building relationships in cyberspace takes time, and cultivating customers takes time.

This book defines all the terms businesspeople may not yet understand and best of all, takes the fear out of them. Why not do a podcast? Try RSS feeds, by all means.

Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet is a perfect marketing approach for Web 2.0 social networking. If you’re at all uncertain of how to use the new technologies — or even what they are — this book will educate you. And probably make you more money along the way.
Rating: 5 / 5

Success in today’s global economy is a challenge. You can’t just hang your shingle and expect customers to know you exist and you can’t just hire someone to do an advertising campaign and expect customers to flock to your door. The world just doesn’t work that way anymore.

So what’s the alternative? A great website? Persuasive email copy? Newsletters? Social networking? Podcasting? YouTube videos? Yes, all of the above and so much more. Today’s entrepreneur has to make smart decisions and use all of the resources at his or her disposal in order to build up a successful business that withstands the test of time.

Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet is the guerrilla marketing book that every entrepreneur should read. Like all of the guerrilla marketing books, this book focuses on solid business practices such as knowing your customer and fulfilling their needs instead of just selling a product. With hundreds of ideas for low cost promotions this information will jumpstart any marketing program and place it on the track to success. So many opportunities exist on the Internet and this book makes it easy to take advantage of them.
Rating: 5 / 5

I guess it depends what you are looking for in this book, but a lot of the same old stuff rehashed here. Mainly relevant to “sales letter” type websites. Not ecommerce if that is what you are after.
Rating: 2 / 5

This book sadly doesn’t live up to the hype. It reads as an advertisement for the services of the authors and even uses one of the authors as a case study.

The authors use every old marketing trick in the book to try to sell in the new internet world. Truly long online sales letters and one page websites that try to gather user data are not revolutionary and are a true turn off to lots of folks.

It is rare that I return a book but this one is going back.
Rating: 1 / 5

This was not my first book in the Guerrilla Marketing series. I have a great deal of respect for Jay Conrad Levinson. His books and his writing style hook me, they’re like reading great novels, fast-paced novels at that, his books are tough to put down. I always feel like he’s had about 6 cups of coffee and can’t even contain his excitement when he’s telling you what you need to know.

I think it is problematic when Levinson writes these books with other authors. I read GM in 30 Days which Levinson co-wrote, and that book was also a little sloppy. When Levinson is the co-writer, I don’t feel the energy all the way through the book, but I do in some parts and I feel I can tell who was writing in certain sections.

So, to GM on the Internet specifically. There probably isn’t much new here if you read the 4th edition of Guerilla Marketing, where Levinson starts talking about blogs, podcasts and websites, however, the ideas are discussed in more depth, a good thing for Guerrillas. The rest of the book is rather obvious if you’re a Guerilla. I have not read any other Internet Marketing books, nor will I, so I’m not sure if this one is par for the course.

There were many mis-spelling and improper word uses in this book. A specific example, on page 133 there is a paragraph that starts “If you’d if you’d”, so again, it’s just poor oversight, probably the publisher/editor’s fault, not necessarily the authors. On page 85 the word “covert” should have been “convert”.

If I were to point out the most helpful part of the book, it would be the web links provided, these were decent and I have started trying to get myself familiar with the ones I had not heard of. In the section on podcasting, the authors were very specific with the directions for creating a podcast. I wasn’t in front of a computer when I read that section, but I felt I could see every step. However, for all the detail there, there was not as much detail given to some areas where I personally felt I could have been enlightened, for example the sections about Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Programs and Merchant Accounts were too short and what was there was too diffucult to comprehend.

Overall, I love the Guerrilla Marketing series. I do suggest this book because even if you’re an accomplished Guerrilla, this book is a relatively quick read and could be seen as an up to date (published in 2008) refresher course. If you’re not a Guerrilla, read this book, and then go back and read the main Guerrilla Marketing book and you’ll be all the better for it.
Rating: 4 / 5